I'm not one that normally writes up reviews etc, but I've had to make an exception in this case after seeing this thread come up when I googled Big Motoring World Review.

My experience with them has been a total nightmare from the moment I called them regarding an advert I saw in Autotrader.

The guy on the phone told me they had the vehicle in question in stock and I could come in for a viewing.
Guess what happened after I went to their "showroom"? yep, it wasnt there "but we got something very similar if you'd be interested". Since I've driven over an hour to get there, I thought why not?

I dont know much about cars, except that German cars are known to be good. Hence the reason why I chose a trader over a private seller (since they offered MOT and all these other so called checks)

They didnt let me test drive the car until I agreed I would buy from them. I told him I would obviously buy the car if I liked it after the test drive.

I dont even know why I bothered with the test drive since I know next to nothing about cars.

Car seemed okay, so I agreed to purchase it for the price of 10k, I bought the 3 year warranty with it as well for another £1000.

1. As soon as I've driven it for an hour, the car seemed to make a crunching noise when going over bumps or when making sharp turns (I've been told its most likely the bushes or something)

2. After a couple of days, the rear parking sensors failed.Big Motoring World agreed to fix this, so went in to the "showroom" and had to wait 7 hours for what is, I'm told a max one hour job.
This is the only thing that they have fixed, I'm yet to hear from them regarding my other issues

3. After a couple of days, I had a puncture, so went to the local garage to have it checked it out, they told me I've been driving an unsafe car since it had a mix of runflats (didnt know what they were until then) and normal tyres.

4. The vehicle also didnt come with with nut lock key or something to take the alloys off, so the garage guy had to use some old fashioned banging and that to get them off

5. After another few days, the front parking sensors failed.

6. They gave me a service book which belonged to another car.

7. The second key doesnt work and is bent and crooked (much like these so called car dealers)

8. The alloys are not M-Sport alloys, but cheap replicas which have been sprayed over to look good.
They are cracked and have been since I purchased the vehicle - God knows the amount of times I've had to change tyres cause of punctures due to this issue.

9. To top it all off - I've been told by my local garage mechanic that this car has definitely been in an accident, the repair job they did is shoddy, the spray job they did on the car is also shoddy.

10. Front wishbone was gone (the guy at kwikfit could actually move the tyres side to side since they were hanging on by a bolt!!!)

I've spent over 3k trying to fix this car and have given up any hope that either Big Motoring World or the Warranty company will assist me.

So, I'm going to post reviews like this all over forums and any other place that will allow me, so that someone else doesnt have to go through the same thing I have.

I've had a car for approx 7-8 months now and neither Big Motoring World or the Warranty company will help me.

Beware of these crooks, as soon as they have your money, thats it, they dont wanna hear from you, for all they care, you could die in an accident as soon as you leave their showroom cause of the dangerous cars they sell.

I gave them plenty of chances to rectify the issues I had and am still having, Man, I was so happy when I brought the car, was looking at angel eyes and all the other little things people do to make the car look nicer but these guys have ruined what should've been a good memory for me, its the first expensive car that I purchased and these crooks totally ruined it for me.

Someone needs to contact WatchDog and get them to do a story on this cowboys. With the amount of people that have commented with bad experiences on this thread i'm sure if a Mod sent it to BBCWatchDog they would look into it and see if its worthy of a segment on their show.

Also i'm surprised customers havn;t taken Big Motoring World to Court. Theres no way i;d stand for this sort of stuff.

I;m so glad I did the search on google before I went to these guys when I was looking for a car.

Yeah I always done, just bought an F30 from BMW dealer and I've ran hpi check & will check the car over thoroughly when I go to pick it up.

sorry, could have worded my reply a little better. what i really was implying was that not all independent dealers are unscrupulous.. I've bought plenty of cars over the years from non-dealers and so long as you are confident that what you are purchasing is not a dud, via a mechanic giving it the once over etc, HPI as you say.. it's typically absolutely fine.

The bottom line is it's not necessary that you go the AUC route, if you have have your head screwed on, which is what a number of replies in this thread seem to think is the only option

sorry, could have worded my reply a little better. what i really was implying was that not all independent dealers are unscrupulous.. I've bought plenty of cars over the years from non-dealers and so long as you are confident that what you are purchasing is not a dud, via a mechanic giving it the once over etc, HPI as you say.. it's typically absolutely fine.

The bottom line is it's not necessary that you go the AUC route, if you have have your head screwed on, which is what a number of replies in this thread seem to think is the only option

Good luck with your new car, get mine in Feb!!

Cheers boss it's nice to hear reviews of independent dealers and Big Motoring World obviously leaves a trail of negative reviews behind it. I wasn't offended by your post. Good luck with the new car sir!

& I've just saved the old man from a long trip to Kent as he is in the market for a 5 Series, told me about this 530d M Sport on Autotrader, took a look at them seller and instantly showed him all the bad reviews from this thread. His response was "I best stay the fook away from them!"

I bought my 08 123d from them in September 2012 - before seeing all of these horror stories, may I add!!

So here's my experience...

I phoned them up to enquire about the service history and to arrange a viewing. He told me when all of the services were and said that someone could well buy the car whilst I was travelling down - fair enough I thought.

On the way down, I phoned up BMW customer services to verify what the salesman told me was correct. It wasn’t. The car hadn’t had a service for the last 20k miles despite the salesman said it had been serviced in the last 6months 6k miles ago. Not a good start. I still carried on with my journey anyway.

I got there and was greeted by an older salesman and I said that I wanted to be left alone whilst I looked over the car. The car was a bit dirty (which he apologised for). I looked over it and it all seemed ok to be honest, a few scratches here and there, rear tyres didn’t have much tread left, carpet mats missing but the lack of the last service was bugging me.

After I was done with all of my checks the salesman came out and I confronted him about the incorrect service info that he gave me – he blamed it on the servers being down… Hmm…

I then said that I would like a test drive and he happily let me take it out for a fairly long drive – he didn’t need any sort of commitment from me before, like I’ve read elsewhere. Everything was fine on the test drive, no of the obvious 1-series issues sprang out in the test drive.

We got back and got down to business… He agreed that he would service the car, change the rear tyres (not new, but swapped with another 1-series!!), improve some of the scratches with a machine polish and supply some carpet mats (again, taken out of another 1-series). I made sure that all of this was documented on the deposit invoice, including exactly what service items would be completed.

I collected the car a week later and they had done everything that they said they would. I had 10 months/ 15,000 trouble free miles. But I do think that I was very fortunate.

All in all, my experience wasn’t too bad. I dealt with an older more experienced salesman who was a bit of a blagger but on the whole he was genuine enough. Glad I didn’t deal with any of the younger jack the lads! One final thing, I forgot my wallet and didn’t have enough diesel to get home, so he leant me £20 out of his wallet to fill up – which was a nice thing to do.

I think one of the main issues with a dealer as big as Big Motoring World is that it is impossible to give every car such a detailed look over and check before they buy it. They turnover so many cars for such small profits that they appear to buy pretty much any car that fits the bill – so they will inevitably get very bad examples. Dean James who I bought my 335i off hinted at this, he deals with low volume higher profit cars that he hand picks and is incredibly fussy at choosing. He sometimes doesn’t have any cars for sale purely because he can’t find good enough examples to buy.

I've been to Big Motoring World 3 times in the last 5 years or so, once to look at a car for myself and twice with two different friends.

In one case the car wasn't available, it had been sold and moved off site in the 3 hours since we'd phoned about it.

The second time (for me) the car made my head spin. Alarm bells ringing everywhere. Mismatched tyres, slightly suspicious service history documentation (looked like they used the same pen for every service over 5 years on an E46!) and some of the panels were different colours and had clearly been painted in the last few days, and yet they claimed the car had no accident history and was in original paint.

The third car was again a bit of a joke. Tyres, paint, interior trim, etc.
Then the service history showed services up to 93k miles ending a couple of years previously yet the car only had 70k miles on the clock, and they were advertising it as a 70k miler.

Brother in law bought a car from there last week..... 1 series 120d 60 plate was up for £13500, got it for £12800.

We did google autotrader etc and car was well priced BUT was a Sixt rental car.

So far nothing wrong (and yes..... i made him google the company first but he was HELL BENT on buying a car from them).

One thing that did surprise me tho - and for those who havent been there, was the scale of the operation - its massive.... at least 100 BMW's there....minimum.

Whilst there i made the salesguy call BMW in front of me on speaker phone to check servicing and confirm warranty was still valid (£1 a minute to call BMW!!!). Reason he bought the car was still under warranty til Oct - so anything not working and it will go back to BMW for repair.